Children Use Non-referential Gestures in Narrative Speech to Mark Discourse Elements Which Update Common Ground.

ABSTRACT: While recent studies have claimed that non-referential gestures (i.e., gestures that do not visually represent any semantic content in speech) are used to mark discourse-new and/or -accessible referents and focused information in adult speech, to our knowledge, no prior investigation has studied the relationship between information structure (IS) and gesture referentiality in children's narrative speech from a developmental perspective. A longitudinal database consisting of 332 narratives performed by 83 children at two different time points in development was coded for IS and gesture referentiality (i.e., referential and non-referential gestures). Results revealed that at both time points, both referential and non-referential gestures were produced more with information that moves discour

SUBMITTER: Rohrer PL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8787325 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature